Saturday, September 30, 2006

I just got back from a road trip to Louisville, Kentucky. My wife had to go there on business for her company.

I fell madly in love with the city as soon as we pulled in, on a nerve wracking 6 lane highway. Louisville has amazing French architecture, a gigantic baseball bat poking up out of the ground, and a Judicial Building with huge glass windows that look out over the Ohio river. (We had legal business to conduct for her company).

We stayed at a Mariott Springhills Suite hotel, which was terrific, very classy place. Memorable meals included a dinner at Applebys (a new burger with pesto sauce rocked my tastebuds) and lunch at a Russian Jewish immigrant restaurant, called Gavi's, where I had a killer Reuben sandwich.

I'm going to email Gavi's and tell them how we loved their food and the friendly service. My wife Andrea talked to the lady owner for quite a while, which is uncharacteristic of her. She said the owner arrived in America with only 2 dresses, no English, and no friends. Now she and her family have a successful restaurant in the heart of downtown Louisville, started in 1982.

As a hardcore blogger, I relate everything to the blogosphere.

So I got to thinking about how a Visitors Bureau and Tourism Blog could work for a city and those new to the community, whether visitors or new settlers. The blog could helped visitors navigate the area, become familiar with the history and dominant industries, include a FAQ or a discussion forum. It could also be used to attract new businesses to the city.

Anecdotes could be used to add color to a city. For example, the night we left Louisville, there was going to be a concert by the Rolling Stones and Alice Cooper. The judge in the Judicial Building told us the large law firms provide an attorney and a judge "on call" for big acts, in case there's "trouble".

Once, during a John Cougar Mellencamp concert, he was the judge on call. In the middle of the concert, he was notified that he was needed. He wondered what happened. Turns out, he officiated at Mellecamp's wedding ceremony. The judge said he's probably the only judge around that officiated at a wedding in front of 49,000 people.

I'm still pondering, but once I work out the strategy and focus of a Visitors Bureau and Tourism Blog, I'll post about it.

Visiting a new area of your state or country is a good way to refresh and expand your mental horizons.

Me holding a strange seed pod of a tree in downtown Louisville. There were a few of these trees, that had nets suspended under the bottom branches, to catch these pods, and keep them from covering the sidewalks. Notice how the stem resembles some kind of Indian rattle, but it's natural formation, not man made.The strange seed pod tree was close to this Medal of Honor statue.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Why would a CEO wonder what to blog about? The CEO should be the most passionate, articulate, informed, optimistic, realistic, and dreamy employee in the organization. CEOs are hired to provide Leadership, which is nothing more than Visionary Service.

Here are some suggestions on what a CEO could communicate to his or her audience.

(1) Professional Origins: How you got interested in your field of expertise.

(3) Company History: How your organization rose to prominence, famous users, setbacks and lessons learned.

(4) Industry News: Your view on the hot new technologies, management techniques, customer relationship, or quality control methods that are proving effective for your company. Discuss where you see the industry evolving, how your company plans to triumph in an uncertain, rapidly changing environment.

(9) Office Politics: Explain how you survive and triumph in the corporate jungle. Give pointers to new executives on the way up, housewives entering the workforce for the first time, older employees who are uptight about change, how to deal with mediocre performers who drag others down.

(11) Product Clarifications: Are there features, benefits, or capabilities related to your product, that many customers are unaware of or confused about? Find out what they are, then proceed to enlighten.

(12) Customer Appreciation: Discuss customer profiles, who your customers tend to be, who you feel could benefit from what your company does, what consumer research reports and surveys reveal.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon two crystal clear indications of profound egotistic arrogance.

Derrida touches upon the idea of narcissism: blindness due to seeing nothing but the self. Other people don't fully exist. They simply trigger fond recollections of self and the adventures of self. You've heard the expression "he's so full of himself" or "she's so stuck on herself".

Here are the two prime examples of narcissism, egotism, and arrogance. Caution: these are truly off the scale, really "out there".

(1) A former CEO of a large corporation was being interviewed on television. When the interviewer asked him what his greatest achievement was, he said "My introduction of Six Sigma total quality control blah blah blah".

But when the interviewer asked what his greatest failure or mistake was, suddenly the CEO gets all fucked in the head acting, and says, "Well, gosh, that's a tough one. I like to focus on the good things. Well...(pause)...we should not have..."

Interviewer interrupts him: "You're saying WE all of a sudden."

CEO: "You never make a decision on your own..."

Interviewer: "Yes, but when I asked what was the greatest thing you did at [company name], you took the credit. When I asked about the worst thing you did, you included others, and avoided personal responsibility..."

This CEO was like any urban gangbanger or hick town hoodlum.

No accountability for strategic errors, unethical practices, or poor business decisions. I hate to tell you the clinical prognosis: no conscience, thus purely amoral (no right or wrong).

Nothing a murderer, con artist, politician, or religious leader does is ever "wrong". These domineering freaks have no sense of "right" and "wrong", "good" and "evil", or "correct" and "incorrect". They are never inappropriate, improper, or misguided. Unless they can blame it on others.

They always "do the best" they can do. Is that a lie? Have you ever spent one single day doing your very best, in every way, at everything you did? Can you say you have zero regrets? I think normal humans have regrets and things they wish they could have done better.

But leaders are generally not human. They are myopic, misanthropic, self-centered egotists. They clawed and chewed their way to the top. You'd be repulsed by what they ate and who they clawed, but that makes them different from you or me. They don't care.

They succeed at any cost. They not only beat the others, they often wish to totally destroy their competitors, so they dominate the whole industry, capture the entire market. Not just triumph, but triumph with gleeful, exhilarating, complete annihilation of all other players.

Watch your leaders. Almost all of them do it. They're scamming us and we let it happen. This is why the slightest deviation is severely condemned and punished. Conformity is enforced via media, peer groups, schools, professional training, and family.

The #1 rule is "Obey and Never Question Your Leaders."

This slavish conformity to the Powers That Pretend To Be causes these egomaniacs to then develop further and more astonishing delusions of grandeur. Because we meekly follow them to disaster. The leaders are thrilled to exercise such power, and will not gladly relinquish it, even in failing health and extreme old age.

Psychotic serial killers, pastors, politicians, and CEOs share the same attitude: "I have no regrets. I did the best I could, given the information I had and the circumstances I was in. I did nothing wrong."

(2) On a religious radio listener call-in program, Pastor Donald Cole takes questions from the audience. Every time someone asks a question, he goes off on a narcissistic tangent, yakking and jabbering in a smug tone of voice about HIS experiences, and HIS opinions, and HIS interpretation of the Bible, and HIS feelings, and HIS ideas, and HIS life conduct.

A caller asked him about "anger". Now wouldn't you think a real pastoral counsellor would ask the person what he specifically wanted to know about "anger"? What are the caller's current problems with "anger"? Is he hot tempered for no good reason? Is he angry at how evil a boss is? Is he angry with the war in Iraq? What is the personal issue here?

Nope. Pastor Cole just rambled on and on about himself.

CONCLUSION: Let's not imitate these losers in our blogs and videos. Let's reach out to our audience, respond to their comments and emails, and be supportive of our loyal allies and random strangers.

Let's focus on others, and point our thinking caps in their direction.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Success on the web, in the blogosphere, in videocasting? Each person and company has its own definition and desired results. But there is a standard pattern to becoming web savvy, blogospherical, and videocommerce adept.

You must do certain things, some of them unpleasant, or time-consuming, to get good at it.

When you first discover the internet, web, blogosphere, and videosphere, you get excited and confused. It takes a little time to fully understand what's going on, the etiquette and terminology, the leaders and theorists. The cream of the crop and the bottom feeding slime.

To speak intelligently about the blogosphere, you really need to operate and maintain your own blog, and contribute user-generated content via comments, to enrich other blogs and become a known entity in the blogosphere.

You must also engage in blogocombat of some form, get tangled up in a serious debate, one that lasts weeks or months, until you achieve victory. No matter how nice, professional, or prissy your blog may be, you will at some point have to clobber a trouble-maker, defend your beliefs, or answer an accusation. Everyone gets flames and player haters online. It comes with the territory.

I highly recommend you read top quality blogs.

You may start with the blogs in my sidebar. Visit them and observe what they do, how they write, what multi media they're experimenting with or discussing. My blogroll contains either the most popular or the most respected thinkers in the several categories. A few are just cool, or are personal friends of mine.

You contemplate what you've been communicating, assessing the value of it.

You pause to consider what your opinions are about certain topics.

You question how you arrived at these conclusions. You wonder if you need to learn more. You consider how you may have issued rash or easily misunderstood statements recently.

You look hatefully at yourself. What are you doing wrong? What is alienating people? What is lacking in what you provide your readers? What do they really need, aside from what you want to give them?

You gaze in hatred at your blog, the colors, the design, the content, everything. You hate it before your enemies can. Then you can change it, improve it, make it keep evolving.

Despise your videos. Assault the way you move, your facial expressions, your tone of voice. Be as critical and harsh as possible. If necessary, force a family member or friend to watch your videos hatefully, and invite them to freely disparage and mock them to their heart's content.

Then, after accumulating sufficient hostility, slurs, slanders, slinging of mud and worse, you must set to work correcting and improving everything, using your best judgment as to who was wise and who was just attacking you personally, out of jealousy or revenge.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

John Cage is the most popular and famous of all the 20th century avant garde music composers. A theoretician and performer, he influenced more musicians than the Beatles. In my opinion.

Anyway, here's the Jimi Hendrix of musical theory, the I Ching anarchist sound rebel John Cage, in a video format.

John Cage is like the CEO of 20th Century Avant Garde Music. What can a CEO or personal videoblogger learn by watching and listening to a successful, innovative, unorthodox, maverick leader in the realm of serious art music and music theory?

We begin with a lively performance of one of Cage's works.

John Cage "In the Name of the Holocaust" (2:00)Margaret Leng Tan plays prepared piano.

Set failure as your goal, and then motivate yourself to fall flat on your face. Be the first one to make an idiot of himself in some complex or difficult endeavor. Make sure plenty of people see it, so you'll get more critics telling what you did wrong. Pay attention to the critics who are either successful or insane. Obey their commands. Come out again, this time with the Killer App.

For a bad example, take my worthless, shabby, unpopular new program entitled Avant Garde Music TV.

A more pedestrian and clunky title, you could not pray for. This is about as raw and unvarnished as it gets. No creativity in the title, no clever wording. Just a blunt statement of exactly what it is.

If you don't know what music could be classed as Avant Garde, you probably won't like it when you learn what it is. It's anti-commercial, unpopular, experimental, DIY (do it yourself), or otherwise "out there" music.

Think banjos and Alesis Midiverbs. Or violins and harmonicas. Jaw-harps and Theremins. Moogs and hollow logs. Or no musical instruments at all, just picking up sounds that occur naturally ("musique concrete"), or making sounds out of the thin air, or with altered samples, or self-generated atomic particles of soundpathing: square, sawtooth, and sine waves.

Get rich by doing next to nothing, that's my policy. Because then you've got more time and energy to do the more important things, the things that matter a lot more than survival, because it will keep working after you're long dead and gone, things like art, literature, tech evangelism, and music.

So like an idiot, I decide to do something stupid, like

"turn YouTube video offerings into a narrow niche channel, by carefully and patiently sifting through chaff and waste products, to find the golden needle of rich relevant rewarding content, post these videos under a categorical imperative, give it a fancy, but explicit and memorable, name.

"What was that tv show about avant garde music? Oh, yeah. It was the Avant Garde Music TV show." your audience members will think when they're at a cocktail party or taffy pull.

Monetize it with ads tucked away down at the bottom of each posting. Sell ads to sponsors based on the content, making the ads a relevant resource and not a distracting irrelevance.

Call the sloppy mess a show. Go to sites where such shows are already popular, and sing to the choir about what you've got and why it's hot."

I do my best work in the margins, traces, and erasures of the web. Using tools nobody's ever heard of, for purpose that seem vain, futile, and absurd. For who, though? For the Far Future Folks.

Vanishing Edge Technology.

Vanishing because the world is not ready for it yet.

But in a day, or a year, or half a decade, the world will crave and be dependent on it.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Jacques Derrida is my favorite philosopher and author. He founded the Deconstruction school of analysis and critique. His "Fear of Writing", an excerpt from the Derrida movie, is especially relevant to blogocombat.

Jacques Derrida "Fear of Writing" (3:47)Writing is more unconscious than sleep. Anxiety after writing a critique.

Jacques Derrida "Speech is Blind" (2:54)on Echo & Narcissus: "to speak is to not see...Narcissus is blind, because he can see only himself and nothing else." JD. Communication as repeating the Other, reflecting the Other.

Jacques Derrida "The Science of Ghosts" (5:22)Cinema and psychoanalysis = science of ghosts. Ghosts increase due to communications technology.

As an expert on such thingamajigs, I offer now my humble tutorial. I take all the mystery out of this exciting trend. Stop what you're undoing, and watch this life changing executive training film now.

The most important thing to keep in mind when composing, performing, and recording computer generated noise concertos is this:

Keep It Moving (or Floating) and Keep It Contrasting.

I. Motion Music

You need to keep it floating, or charging, or morphing, or something. The noise must go somewhere, something should happen to it, slowly or rapidly, smoothly or abruptly, quietly or loudly. It should begin very different from where it ends. A sense of direction and movement toward a goal. So listeners feel like they've been taken somewhere different. It starts, it moves, it arrives.

II. Floating Music

Or do the opposite, if you can.

A lump of musically treated air that just sits there, just hangs like a paralyzed cloud in the sonic atmosphere, can also be interesting, though much harder to do. Try it.

Try to make "motionless" music that remains entertaining for a long duration. The key to that static, non-dynamic, stationary music is to have an ambient sound cluster that can drift like a kite, bobbing up and down in the same spot, never going anywhere, just dancing at a fixed location.

III. Contrasting Sounds

If you have a low tone bass background, add some shrill high pitched flute, bird, or baby sounds, for contrast.

Too many clusters of sounds all in the same frequency, pitch, tone, or texture will ruin a song. But simply pairing two or three contrasting sound events will add much complexity, enrichment, and sense of design to your composition.

EXTRA TIP: Semi Morphs

One of my favorite techniques is to change a song, ala Stereolab, in the middle of it. I call it "semi morphing" because you go semi, halfway through, then transform the thing.

So that the song is really two songs, the second half being a clear departure, a massively changed, un-variant of the first half. Give a song two separate movements. This gives your audience "two for the price of one".

It's akin to Seth Godin's admonition to always provide a "free prize inside" of every product or service, an unexpected bonus.

You do that, and you'll rule. Just be patient, and stick to the business of fulfilling your dreams. Life will manage the rest for you, if you get out of the way, stand tall, move fast, change direction in an instant, keep getting back up from a fall, learn perpetually, and DO SOMETHING, do anything, about your biggest problems or opportunities.

Blogrolls display your decision-making ability. What you decide to put in your blogroll is an indication of who you are. Online, we look for any clues as to who people really and truly are. Use your blogroll, your list of quality blogs you like and read, as a way to show how smart and connected you are.

No blogroll?

Not having any linked list of favorite or respected blogs, this makes users think you're isolated, ignorant of relevant blogs in the blogosphere, or afraid of driving readers to other blogs.

CEOs should never want to portray themselves in such a manner. CEOs should appear confident, altruistic, and fully engaged in the blogosphere. You want to avoid accusations of exploiting blogs just to appear hip and technologically savvy. You need to visit other blogs and post comments at them. It will create buzz for you.

CEO blogs with no blogroll?

Bad idea. At least put Tom Peters, Seth Godin, Harvey Mackay, Doc Searls, Tim Berners-Lee, in a blogroll...and be sure to read the blogs in your blogroll at least once a week. You'll learn more than competitors who are clueless about blogs.

Pick some favorite business authors, artists, philosophers, consultants, or industry pundits, and then Google their names to see if they have a blog. Is it any good? If so, consider adding it to your blogroll.

Blogrolls contribute to a rich user experience. They enable your blog to function as a portal. There are two types of blogrolls: blog media network blogrolls and independent blogrolls.

Blog media network blogrolls contain ONLY those blogs associated with the blog media network with which it is a member. The blogroll is actually just a directory of blogs that HAVE to be on there, it's part of the agreement when you sign up to join a blog media network.

Like in my own New Reformed Insane Blog Media Network. To belong, you have to agree to put The World's Dullest Blog, Tinbasher, Mr. Angry, and Dvorak Uncensored, among other blogs, mostly all devoted to humor, satire, sarcasm, and well deserved bashing of stupidities. That's what makes a blog media network work. Exclusionary policies and portal mentality.

CEO bloggers must not go the blog media network blogroll route.

CEO bloggers should use an independent blogroll.

Independent blogrolls are beholden to no one. They are free, and they look free. In an independent blogroll you include any blogs, even blogs of outspoken enemies and ferocious competitors. If you list only blogs that are allies and non-competitive, you limit the exploratory value of your blog. Your readers will be limited in where they can go, when they're finished reading your blog. They will go.

Give them good blogs to visit next. That's what a blogroll is.

A blogroll says "Goodbye. Here are some suggestions on where to go next. Hope you enjoy your selection."

A blogroll says "Here's the company I keep, the blogs I've been known to hang around at. You might even see some comments I posted, at some of these places. My credibility can be seen to some degree in this list. You have to admit, at least I know the right blogs to list, according to the industry I'm in."

The number one web navigation principle is: Link from reputable sites. In other words, visit the most credible, trustworthy web site, then visit sites they list on their site, or quote in editorial text.

That's how people can use your blog, as a stepping stone to other quality blogs.

Enrich your reader's experience, provide leadership in where they could go next, and display your knowledge of sites relevant to your topic and audience, with a blogroll.

Paul Woodhouse would house himself in America if he could, and, bypassing the ease and luxury of applying for an illegal alien status, actually obediently got a legal visitor status instead, a work permit or temporary citizenship or whatever it's called.

He emailed me today and asked about yellow and Peoria, I knew the "bananas" remark was a vieled reference to another yellow entity, what some call big yellow, Caterpillar. I like Caterpillar. Everybody in Peoria works there or serves those who do. It's nice that way. I wrote technical literature and marketing brochures for their usability lab, but that was long time ago, in about 1996 or so.

Anyway, he asked me, "how's [he assumes I live in] Peoria?"

Here's an edited version of my email message to him of a few minutes ago, a window of surreptitious transparency and

Ambient Sludge for Interplanetary Infotainment, is what I humbly call it. CompuMusik. Just me and the SourceForge Audacity audio editor, an internet mic, and way too much sleep time devoted to blurry half awake experimentation and beta testing rhythmic slop.

1938 Media/Loren Feldman just finished a New Orleans blogumentary film for Chartreuse, the blog media network channelist analyst, and it's incredibly pro and riveting in a sheet metallic sense.

[text accidentally deleted] site, but it makes me feel like a [text deleted] Fictional Character to have [no text deleted] media attention, a [text deleted] commitment, a special [i.e., avant video tutorial] "show", and orders barked at me from producers, investors, and wild teenage groupies (I suspect not all would be female, either, I'm such a handsome, charming, and [text mercifully deleted] man.)

Halloween is a scary month or three in America, all the ghouls come out and there are werewolves aplenty. The tide has turned against them, of course, but they persist in more hidden and bizarre costumes now, sometimes morphing into trees, owls, or abandoned toys.

I have many projects I'm busy ruining, so I've got anticipations of a twist in the wind.

I want to be unknown, or if known, known only as "he" and "him" (I toss "him" in just for the sake of variety, not to proliferate honors and duplications of my self).

[Editor Clarification: he seems to want to abandon the whole "Vaspers the Grate" thing, and be, not his true self sans aka, but something alien to both self and non-self. Rumors are that he's planning to "disappear" in a spectacular, visually pervasive manner.]

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

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I've been thinking about how Tom Peters has been saying that success is what ruins companies, not failure. Too much failure destroys any entity, human or company, we know. But too much success also defiles a person or business.

Too much success is a curse. Continued, "smooth-sailing", seemingly eternalized success is a curse. Because it institutionalizes a structure of resistance to change. It becomes a boat everyone is privately warned not to rock. It becomes toes that are easily stepped on by a brash and brilliant overachiever.

You get disinformation from success. By the time you identify what you think caused the success, the real cause (right place, right time, okay product, media attention, tolerable novelty) has vanished, because the technology, media, and consumers have moved on past you.

What caused yesterday's success, still seems fairly reasonable today, but is what will prevent your survival tomorrow.

You need a few, perhaps a long series of failures, colossal mistakes, looking like an idiot, all these things we fear, are things we all need. I said NEED.

Since Edison did not set out to improve the candle, but envisioned a whole new reality of switched-on artificially lit workstations and homes, he had to fail repeatedly, until nature yielded up the secret of incandesence.

There's a wrong kind of everything. A wrong kind of work ethic (laziness). A wrong kind of financial transaction (con artist). And there's a wrong kind of success.

Wrong Success is based on past results, tradition, and "what the customers want now".

Wrong Success is also succeeding in spite of.

It's the "in spite of" that will eventually gather critical mass and then kill your company or personhood. Success in spite of exploitation, in spite of ethics violations, in spite of bad diet, in spite of an inactive lifestyle, in spite of everybody hating you, in spite of lazy clerical help, in spite of aetc.

We all have our "in spite ofs". And they're poised to some day strike you down.

Right Success is based on innovation, customer dialogue, altruism, and "what the customers are starting to want, and will probably want in the future".

If your success is based on meeting the needs of your current customers, I pity you. Look at what happened to Ford and GM. Arrogance, says Tom Peters and Seth Godin. Basing strategy on "what worked in the past".

What worked in the past, what's working right now, is NOT going to work tomorrow. Each day we must think "what shall I destroy in my personality, my belief system, my ideology, my business today?"

If you identify the dysfunctional, or soon to be outmoded, aspects, and surgically remove them yourself, it's a lot easier than life doing it to you. Trust me. Attack yourself before life becomes aware that you have a problem.

Success makes us complacent, smug, arrogant, selfish, greedy, and reckless. Success is a delusion. All you can ever "succeed" at is maintaining your pursuit of success. Success is not a state of being, it's an prismatic attitude and a directioned motivation.

You're not obtaining the results you want, or need, as a person or a company?

Ramp up the failures.

Take bigger risks.

Start falling flat on your face more often.

Look idiotic more often.

Expose yourself to massive amounts of extremely hostile attack.

Be a pest. Be a thorn in the side of something that's evil or stupid.

Do something totally bizarre.

Smash the damn box, don't just timidly attempt to "think outside" it. How can you think outside the box, if you live inside that box. That box of comfort zones, familiar reality, tried-and-true routines, and effective traditions? All of which are doomed in our Accelerated Society.

Whoever dominates your industry, market, artform, audience, or cause today? They're the Losers to avoid imitating. You can learn nothing from the current business leaders. Why? Because, with few exceptions, they're already dying and declining. No market leader is surging forward ferociously or future-triumphantly. All flash-in-the-pans.

Shun the leaders. Avoid successful people like the plague.

But don't go to the opposite extreme, and hang around with mediocre losers and apathetic whiners.

No! You must move Beyond Success, not retreat to the Wrong, the Evil, or the Foolish. You must rush, right now, headlong and heartstrong, into the Future Made By the New.

The future is easy to predict: it will be A:L:L new. Completely different than what you see around you today. Almost nothing of the old will remain. And the New will do it's usurpation at hitherto unimaginable velocities, leaving the terrain literally strewn with rotting corpses, both businesses and individuals.

Why? Technology is exploding faster than anything human can keep up with, the information/manipulation tech field is racing like crazy toward some mysterious, unknown goal, fueled by the faux, discredited, detrimental Technological Imperative ("what can be made, must be made, and humans will just have to adjust to it").

Flock to the up-and-comers, the perpetual failures, and the neo-hopeless.

Go to where people are fighting hard, struggling heroically, and making tons of mistakes.

That's where innovation is happening. They have to innovate in order to be unique, to be where we will all be once they get the ball rolling.

Whatever is emerging with promise and persecution, sabotage and setbacks: THIS is where the laws and models for the Next Reality are hidden.

Eventually, abruptly, unexpectedly, some shooting star will come screaming out of the mess: a Google, a Vint Cerf, a YouTube, a Post Secret, a Doc Searls, a Cluetrain Manifesto, a Bob Dylan, a Digg, a Weblogsinc, a Tim Berners-Lee, a Firefox, an eBay...who knows what the next Big Big Thing will be, or where it will come from?

Oh, we know where the Next Big Thing will come from.

Information, Communications, Transactions, and Object Manipulation Technology. That's where it's all coming from. Products that enable, empower us to do things remotely and interact with others digitally.

The deeply human need to share, belong, socialize, learn, and be entertained.

NOTE: Way up near top of page, under top navbar and above Location Options, to the right of the Enter Keywords: text entry box, there is a Send Feedback on New Job Search Engine link. Very good to invite comments this way, on a a new web site feature.

I enter single keywords, rather than job titles, because the specificity of the job title (e.g., web usability analyst) would be too confining, narrowing my search too much.

When I see job positions advertised for anything remotely related to what I do, for example "Senior Mainframe Programmer/Analyst", "SAP Consultant", "Project Manager (Lotus Notes)", "Systems Designer", "ASP.net/C# Developer", or "Senior Developer .NET" (actual job titles on Dice), I will contact the companies.

Not because I have those job skills, but because my skills are related to the IT department and the marketing departments. When IT department jobs are available, that means the company is expanding operations, or replacing personnel, but either way, they may have a need for what I do.

As I seek new clients for my web usability, web content creation, and digital marketing services, I'm trying various approaches, both online and offline.

Biggest problem is describing what I do, who I am. I'm so many things, and I like them all, pretty equally.

Who I Am:

* web content creator (blue: hyperlink color)

* blogologist (orange: Ukraine democracy revolution color)

* marketing consultant (green: money color)

* videocaster (red: human blood color)

* technical writer (black: print publication color)

* web usability analyst (purple: intuitive interface color)

* user observation test administrator (brown: down to earth color)

How can I make a job seeking video? a client solicitation video? This is a challenge I must now explore.

Monday, September 18, 2006

I checked it to re-assure myself today. Yes. I'm still the reigning king of blogocombat, according to Google. Only this time, I owned the first two pages, in their entirety, ALL the first 30 results for "blogocombat" [sans quotes] were posts on my sites, or were written by me and published on other blogs as comments. There are even some of my YouTube videos appearing in the results page.

I looked at it again and I owned ALL 5 pages, 60 105 results, with the exception of 1 by Robert Scoble and 1 by Humour and Last Laugh (who mentions "Vesper the great"), and then I got sick and tired of seeing so many of my posts in one place, I bailed out. Maybe I'm the only one who says "blogocombat" and so I own the first 36 million results?

I have achieved SEO purity and victory, the natural way.

Would you like to own a term in your industry, or specialized niche?

So that: when anybody types in that word or phrase, YOU appear to be the dominating leader, the universal expert, the triumphant sage, the wisest scholar, the most credible and reliable source of info!

The leading supplier! The most prolific authority! The best and most trustworthy reference! The KING of your niche or industry. Your musical sound or artform. You are the One to go to, to buy from.

SE domination can be very lucrative and strategic. Think about it. They see you first and foremost. In my case, web surfers see ONLY ME for quite a while.

Here then is my #1 SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Tip: forget SEO.

I use no SEO techniques, but I own, and have owned, some blogological terms that I intended to own. I do not spamdex, I simply type whatever I know about blogocombat, and I post about that topic frequently. At a wide range of blogs, not just my own myopically. The frequency and range are due to I Am The King of Blogocombat.

The only good thing about lonelygirl15 is the hateful, mocking, satirical anti-tributes, the cyber-punk videocombat backlash. "I haven't left my room since 1984" represents the insincere decepto-exploitation rampant in lonelygirl15. Here's a funny parody of LG15.

Vaspers thanks YouTuber Paul Vato, of "The Housesitter" video (featuring "Bud" aka David Faustino, from Married With Children) fame, for subscribing to Vaspers videos, then discusses with Gary the mis-titling of a Caroliner Rainbow CD that another clown sent him. [Caroliner Wikipedia page]

Paul Vato's extremely funny video about a woman housesitting a famous celebrity's ritzy mansion, while the actor is off traveling, must be seen: "The Housesitter". You will laugh. That's a prophecy, not a command.

Top notch. Almost too good to believe, all the subtle nuances and innuendos. It stars David Faustino and Sarah Norton.

Many probably think their blog is an island floating on a soup of other blogs, but lifted to the top. It's not. It's immersed in a stew of hyperlinking nodes and it's more like a cell within a body.

The cell is not important in itself. What's important is how it functions within a larger system.

Likewise, your blog is not an isolated lump of mental clutter and random jabbering. Your blog, to be effective and satisfying, cannot try to function as an island drifiting along, detached and self-referential.

CEO bloggers especially need to understand this.

An individual blog fits into an entity called the Blogosphere. This realm is an interconnected cluster of living, moving, growing, unfolding significance. If your blog was the only blog that existed, it would die of starvation. Blogs feed on each other, sustain each other, and support one another.

This means that you need to (1) visit other blogs (2) post comments on other blogs (3) encourage other bloggers (4) teach blogging skills to new bloggers (5) respond quickly to comments posted on your blog and use tools to prevent comment spam and abusive comments (6) defend the blogosphere from MSM attacks (7) promote the core values of blogging (8) improve your blog, thereby having a positive impact on other bloggers (9) keep enhancing your blog, with photos, podcasts, and video.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

When you publish a new post to your blog every day, for a long time, something happens inside you. You become a different person. You change within, and others may see the results in your life.

You become a blog. You start saying things like you were writing a blog post. You tend to be more sensitive, more alert, more introspective. You see something on the news and you want to quote it in your blog. You "write" it in your mind, and later add it to a post.

Inner blogging: when your thoughts are like posts.

It's like when I used to make underground video films. When I used a video camcorder much of the day, day after day, working on a film, even when I was not using the camera, I felt like a camera. I saw things through my inner lens. I even sort of "recorded" things in my mind, in an internal video camcorder. At times I imagined my eyes could zoom in on objects. I framed visual input mentally.

Have you noticed this in your life? Do you "blog internally" even when you're not on the computer? Do you tend to have more opinions now? Are you more confrontational and blunt? Are you a better debater or researcher since you started blogging?

Inner blogging: your mind becomes a blog, and your sensory impressions are the posts. Your entire life seems like an ongoing "blog" of sorts. Blogging is then like praying. You are constantly "publishing" new "posts" to your inner consciousness.

The remarks of other people are like "comments" posted to your inner blog.

Inner blogging: there is no division between your blog and your brain. They are one.

If the mediocre masses praise you, and make you rich, like Tom Cruise or Eminem, you're no innovator. My motto: Either innovate, or find another planet to live on. Business desperately needs new models, strategies, and methodologies.

One of my role models for aggressive rebellion and intellectual combat is Thomas Jefferson, the ethical anarchist.

Anarchist? you question. Yes, anarchist. You heard me correctly.

What I believe is that humans are endowed with Reason, and can govern themselves without politicians and political parties. I don't care if this sounds absurd, utopian, or "out there". What seems bizarre today is accepted practice tomorrow, as technology continues to make non-magical miracles occur, ever leaping forward.

Women voting, abolition of slavery, and landing a man on the moon also seemed "out there" and impossible, until someone with vision and courage made them happen. To go with the flow is for losers and mediocres. To invent and overcome is to necessarily be "different" and usually unpopular, perhaps hated and killed. Who cares? It's the Idea that's important.

Many societies have thrived without government, but none have existed without some variant of spirituality. Metaphysics triumphs over Politics. That doesn't mean that religion is necessarily "good". We see the evil extreme of mysticism in misogynist, xenophobic, anti-democracy Islamo-fascism...and in racist, patriarchal, fundamentalist, anti-science churchianity.

Thomas Jefferson defined a form of Ethical Anarchy that he greatly admired. Now Web 2.0 is attempting to fix many of the problems in the web, so that we may ignore national, political, ethnic, and religious boundaries, to become one race: the human race.

Now a word from our sponsor, Thomas Jefferson, in praise of No Government:

"This practice results from the circumstance of their [Native American "Indians"] having never submitted themselves to any laws, any coercive power, any shadow of government.

Their only controls are their manners, and that moral sense of right and wrong, which, like the sense of tasting and feeling, in every man makes a part of his nature. An offense against these is punished by contempt, by exclusion from society, or, where the case is serious, as that of murder, by the individuals whom it concerns.

Imperfect as this species of coercion may seem, crimes are very rare among them: insomuch that were it made a question, whether no law, as among the savage Americans, or too much law, as among the civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, one who has seen both conditions of existence would pronounce it to be the last: and that the sheep are happier of themselves, than under the care of the wolves.

It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government. The Savages therefore break them into small ones..."

--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XI: Aborigines.

I see Web 2.0 as the digital equivalent of this.

Markets are dissolving into niches.

Customers are no longer passive, obsessively consuming, materialistic idiots, like a previous generation. The new generation, the blog and videocasting generation, is no longer loyal to any one company, celebrity, nation, or religion.

The Web 2.0 generation is a rapidly morphing blob of mercurial freedom, changing, advancing, and destroying the traditions and shackles of the past.

When an invasive intruder on my Skype video chat channel asked "where are you?", I replied "I'm in the Blogosphere" in my creepiest voice. I made my head appear to fall off. Then I bounced my "decapitated" head around like a dribbling basketball, all over the videoscreen, until she freaked out and vanished. Boip. Gone.

Terrorists chopping heads off just makes us Americans laugh at the terrorists. We're used to much more gory crap than that lame little gimmick. Don't they ever watch our slasher films and horror movies? I guess not.

I am in the Blogosphere.

Not America. Not planet Earth or Pluto.

I inhabit one place and one place only: the Blogosphere.

TOP PHOTO: my computer station, when I move my webcam quickly and wildly, and snap the photo in the midst of crazed, blurred focus. Metaphor for change.